After Donald Trump threatened to expand his purported crime crackdown to other Democratic-run cities and send National Guard troops into Chicago and Baltimore, Nicolle Wallace urged Americans to stay alert for what she called a “slow-moving coup” being carried out by the administration.
Wallace began Monday’s “Deadline: White House” by reminding viewers of the “frog in boiling water metaphor.” The premise of the parable is that if you place a frog in boiling water, it will jump out; but if you place that frog into tepid water and slowly raise the temperature to a boil, the animal will not feel the need to react until it’s too late. Wallace said the story “seeks to illustrate the difference between sudden and gradual peril.”
According to Wallace, that gradual peril perfectly captures the current state of America under Trump and “prompts an important question: When will we know — when will we really know — that we are officially under authoritarian rule here?”
Wallace told viewers to take stock of the “drastic, unprecedented measures” the administration had undertaken by deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., which she argued is not aimed at fighting crime. “The reality is that, as far as we can tell so far, it is not about that,” she said. “It’s a show of force.”
The “Deadline: White House” host then cited a new report from The New York Times that found many of those swept up in Trump’s crackdown in the nation's capital have been arrested on only minor violations.
Reading from the Times report, Wallace shared, “Many of the cases that have landed in court have raised concerns that the takeover seems intended to artificially inflate its effect because government lawyers have been instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter how minor the incident.”
Wallace said Trump’s new threat to expand his takeover beyond Washington would place nearly 4 million Americans under this “dark new” regime.
“Which brings us back to where we started,” she continued. “When will we know? When will all of us know we crossed into something new — into authoritarianism?”
“Is the water hot enough for you yet?” she asked.
You can watch Wallace’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.